Moonlight Magic

by Alexander, K. R.

  “What? It’s just for convenience.”

  He held on, trying to tug the burger away.

  I let go.

  When his first effort to swallow the thing whole resulted in a slobbery heap of burger and bun and cheese all over the grass, he caught his breath from the gagging, then dived back in for a greasy victory. The entire performance lasted only ten seconds. But was it really needed?

  I tore the next one in half—with much juicy mess—and he managed those in about three seconds each.

  He was mopping up my hands with his tongue when Isaac came over to ask about tomorrow.

  This drew a shout from Andrew, who had his own rucksack in the trailer already. “Forget tomorrow. Snowy’s really asking about tonight.”

  “We’re staying with Cassia.” Kage cut in so fast he was speaking over Andrew. “Said so already.”

  Andrew scoffed. “You did last night, corpse-nose.”

  “We’re right by the coast and there’s not much to see in the area as far as stone circles,” Isaac continued calmly to me as if the others didn’t exist. “That part will be simple enough. As to the mages, you intend to continue asking after them in the same manner as in Linlithgow?”

  “I’m afraid so. And, yes, that means another small scry, at least.” I turned the backs of my fingers toward Jed’s nose and he went on licking. “Dreams got me nowhere last night. I haven’t even seen a faie in my dreams for the past few nights. That’s the other thing.” I looked down. “I wish you could roam and maybe spot some for us.”

  Jed glanced up, finally desisting.

  “But you can’t,” I added. “It’s not safe. We don’t know what might be out here and we need to stay close.”

  “Perhaps a group in fur?” Isaac suggested.

  I shook my head. “Maybe they would present themselves, but what good would it be if you can’t talk to them? I need to be there also. Just like the night they came to us in Yorkshire. That was the perfect storm. And Zar had been actively summoning them. I’ll scry before bed. I just… No, scratch that. I’ll scry in the morning.”

  Isaac nodded. “If your magic is somehow still being detected best to use it when we’re on the move.”

  “Yes. Maybe also time to check in with Stefan again. I’ll scry first, see if I get anywhere.” I let out a breath. “I can’t believe the supposed whole purpose of my involvement was to find these people with magic. First I misled us with bad information from magic and now I feel like I can’t even use magic.” Rubbing my brow with my wrist since my hands were all slimed. “It’s like renting a good car especially for a road trip but running out of gas. You’d have been better off to go on bicycles. What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You’re smirking at me.”

  “I was not smirking.” Isaac, who stood at the side of the Jeep while Jed was planted right in front of me, leaned in to kiss my hair. “I might have been smiling at you. Even if that were the case, it’s simply because you are beautiful and generous and you are figuring this out—believe it or not.” Smiling more as he straightened up.

  I watched him while Jed also gazed up into my face. For some reason, thinking of something Andrew had recently said to me.

  After a pause, I said, “What do you really think of—” I shook my head. “What did you honestly think of me when we first met?”

  “I thought of what Atarah had said about my chart.”

  “That might be what you thought after meeting me, but not what you thought of me,” I prompted.

  “I thought…” Isaac was slow with the next words while we still kept mostly unblinking eye contact in the light from inside the Jeep. “You were a surprise. Unexpected. Not what I thought, yet everything I needed. Meeting you was like expecting to find a pound coin under the sofa cushion and finding a diamond ring. So … perhaps what I thought of you when we met is a bit hard to describe.”

  “Fair enough. I was pretty confused and in denial for weeks. Not as if I can be uppity about tangled feelings.”

  “Why do you ask, arä?”

  “Thinking about us all ending up here together and how weird and wonderful and crazy and perfect and … tangled we are.” I finally looked away to press the tip of Jed’s nose with a finger, making his whiskers spring forward. I addressed him instead. “Gabriel’s staying in the tent, right? Will you and Zar please keep him company in fur so he doesn’t freeze in that sleeping bag? Then, however everyone wants to arrange themselves inside. I’m going to be on the bed. I don’t mind where the four of you end up but Andrew also needs to be kept warm. In the morning we’ll get back to hunting. Scry, maybe even make a couple phone calls if there’s service. In the meantime, let’s try to relax. Anyone who wants to run around out here can, I think? It seems quiet enough. No more than yapping distance away.”

  I took my backpack to the trailer while Jed shadowed me, nipping at the bag and trying to get my attention.

  “Where’s the tin of shortbreads?” I asked Isaac over my shoulder.

  By the time I stepped back outside from the trailer, with Jed pestering, no one had answered. In fact, camp had gone rather quiet.

  I looked from Isaac by the Jeep to Andrew in the dimly lit trailer behind me to Kage and Jason sharing another chunk of watermelon here on the grass.

  “That huge tin? From Edinburgh?” I prompted. “The office party tin? Come on. I saw you with it earlier. I’m only going to eat one. And he wants one.”

  Jed wagged his tail.

  Another silence.

  Isaac cleared his throat.

  Gabriel straightened from pounding in a peg for the rain cover and also looked around. Everyone else seemed to be gazing to the indigo horizon.

  “You know what they say, darling,” Andrew murmured from the trailer doorway. “People come and go so quickly around here.”

  “You did not eat all those cookies in one day.”

  Silence.

  “That was how many pounds of shortbread? Five? Eight?”

  The next silence was broken by Isaac’s careful voice. “We might have to visit another supermarket tomorrow. Sausage rolls and shortbreads make ideal snacks for the road.”

  “How come you didn’t get us a haggis?” Kage asked through slurping watermelon.

  “I’d be glad to,” Isaac said. “But one needs an oven or a simmering pot to warm them.”

  “When did you even eat all that?” I asked. “I only saw the tin out a couple of times…”

  Jed mouthed my hand.

  “Cooked through from the start, aren’t they?” Kage asked. “Could eat them cold.”

  “Belle’s been dying to try black pudding,” Andrew said.

  “Perhaps…” Isaac said. “We won’t have as much choice in the smaller shops out here. We can always look. A good bake shop would have sausage rolls and meat pies even in a smallish town.”

  “Switch? Do you have my sunglasses?” Jason asked.

  “You need them right now, knob-head?” Andrew’s tone dripped sarcasm.

  “That’s not the point. Can’t find them…”

  “What, Jed?” I looked down.

  He was trying to lead me away—like Lassie to the well, only rather larger and more intimidating.

  “A B&B would have a proper breakfast on offer with black pudding and fried bread and eggs,” Isaac said thoughtfully.

  “Cassia?” Jason walked with us as Jed took me to Thomas’s bike, now his. “I have toffees if you’d fancy a sweet. You’re welcome.”

  “What?”

  Jed nosed at the bike’s panniers, but I was distracted.

  “I’m sorry we didn’t keep a shortbread back for you,” Jason said. “I didn’t know you’d want one.”

  “Oh, that’s okay. It’s not a big deal. I guess the apple was my dessert. I just … that was … large…”

  “Don’t they have a pizza place out here?” Kage was asking Isaac. “Only decent way to fill up in worm shops.”

  “Buffets,” Andrew said.

&nbs
p; “Oh, bloody hell, that pizza buffet in Idaho?” Kage moaned. “Moon and Sun. Never forget that place. Kir, why’d you have to bring that up?”

  I opened the pannier for Jed to poke his head in.

  “The barbecue was better,” Andrew said.

  “Couldn’t go on and on for more, though,” Kage said.

  “You should have seen the hot food bar in that supermarket in Boulder,” Jason said.

  “You won’t find any buffets out here,” Isaac said. “Pizza maybe.”

  Jed drew out his wool ball in his teeth.

  “Reckon we could get another tin of shortbreads?” Kage asked.

  “Shortbread is everywhere in Scotland,” Isaac said. “No problem there.”

  I was distracted looking around because I couldn’t see Zar, but finally concluded he was in the tent by the ripple of the sides. Stripping off to change as Jed had done. No conversation, no contact if he could help it. A ghost in our midst. I felt chilled thinking of him, wanting to creep in there, embrace him, hang on until he healed, until he knew how much I loved him and wanted him to be whole.

  “They still make haggis the proper way in a sheep’s stomach?” Kage asked. “Or is it all synthetic sterk these days like some of the sausage casings?”

  “Depends where you get it.” Isaac sounded thoughtful. “Best I ever had was from a place in Inverness. We should stop on our way back south whenever that is.”

  Jed, wagging his tail, bumped my hand with the ball.

  “It’s too dark, Jed. How will you see it?”

  He nudged and wagged more.

  “Can you smell it out? We’ll give it a try. You have a flashlight—a torch—in here, right?” I found the flashlight in the panniers and walked to the open ground beyond the trailer. Here, I switched on the light to make sure I wasn’t tossing the ball into rocks or trees.

  “If you hear or smell anything suspicious come right back,” I told him. Really, though, it was hard to be too worried, even in the dark. We were close to mundanes who would hear any real sort of ruckus like a reaver attack, plus we were all together.

  I threw a few times and found he was right: he had no trouble locating the ball and bringing it back. Then, since my arm was not exactly world class, I put a bit of magic behind it.

  Jed sped away over the grass, vanishing unless I kept the light trained on him. I had to lower it as he came back so it wasn’t in his eyes. Still, they glowed green.

  It was meditative, throwing and waiting for him. What might have been creepy instead felt peaceful with voices of the others and the rhythm of Jed’s paws. Hard to believe that less than two months ago I had been afraid of Jason when he’d stepped up into my face in fur. The first one of them I ever saw up close in that form. They had been such mysteries. In some ways they still were. If only I could solve this real one for them.

  Jed returned with the ball and ran around me like a border collie. He bounded in, circled, tossed his head. I couldn’t be moved to chase him. He dropped the ball at my feet. I bent. He snatched it and pranced away.

  I stood again, thinking of Zar and mysteries, still waters, ripples, and the broken pack waiting for us in London. Should Zar have stayed? Should he be with Atarah and the others now?

  Jed stopped abruptly in his frisking and alerted.

  With a quick chill, I turned to follow his gaze. He wasn’t looking at some lurking menace from the night, but back to the trailer. Gabriel stood there, staring at us. He turned away. I just had time to see an unsettled look on his face.

  Feeling flushed, though I couldn’t say why, I took the ball from Jed.

  “What was that?” I asked in a whisper as I bent.

  Jed bounded off again for the next throw.

  They were singing now. Not their ballads or lovely Lucannis melodies, but what sounded rather like a drinking song. If alcohol was so toxic to wolves that hardly any of them drank, did they have drinking songs? I couldn’t follow. Something about twelve hunts for twelve moons, then eleven hunts for eleven moons, and so on. A hunt song then: something to sing before or after gulping down a few pounds apiece of raw meat. After starts and stops I gathered the purpose was to teach it to Isaac.

  He’d probably been able to attribute his ignorance of old wolf songs to his “foreigner” status growing up with the Mountain Pack. As it transpired, it was a wonder he knew Lucannis and any of their songs at all. He must have learned with the Icelandic wolves and his surrogate family of foxes. But why would they speak Lucannis? Did they have their own language?

  Words mastered, they started singing it as a round—Kage, Jason, Isaac, and Andrew, with Kage demanding Gabriel join in—so they had five numbers covered at once. I never heard a peep from Zar.

  Again feeling a shiver of apprehension, I stopped Jed on his next return.

  “Will you check and make sure Zar didn’t wander? Probably in the tent.”

  Jed looked that way, then pressed the ball at me. I took it.

  He dashed off, ready for the next throw, watching over his shoulder for the angle.

  “What are you doing?”

  He trotted back to me, watching my face.

  “Will—? Wait, did you just decide to skip it since that was a question? So you said, ‘No, thanks,’ like the matter was settled?”

  Jed was panting hard by now. He seemed to be smiling. Eyes wide, corners of his mouth turned up.

  “Sorry. Please go check to make sure Zar is still there, or else track him if he’s not.”

  Jed shut his mouth and cocked his head.

  “What’s not clear about that? I don’t want to poke my head in the tent. It’s not my bedroom and he’s avoiding me right now. I just want to make sure he’s all right and not slunk away to be on his own.”

  Again, Jed looked that way.

  “Also, will you keep an eye on him tonight? If he does take off, not that I’m expecting him to, wake us. Don’t just follow him by yourself.”

  At last, after tremendous consideration, Jed paced deliberately back in among his singing packmates. I walked with him to the corner of the trailer.

  Jed stalked to the tent, shoved his head past Gabriel’s legs to get a sniff in the flap, then back to me with a strut as if he had accomplished some bold or complex feat—and expected full acknowledgment of this heroic deed.

  “Thank you.”

  Jed regarded me.

  “I’d give you a biscuit, but, guess what?” I held up both hands, one with the ball, which Jed’s eyes followed. “Some wolves got into them.”

  “Cassia—” Kage seemed to burst at me as he’d been leaning against the side of the trailer. “Sing with us.”

  “I can’t sing.”

  Kage laughed like I’d said I couldn’t count. “First it’s, ‘There once was a hunt in the twelfth Moon’s light.’”

  “No, Kage, really, I’m no singer.”

  “It all blends in, darling.” Andrew had flopped down in the trailer doorway, door wide, though a flashlight and bike light glowed inside, attracting insects.

  “You’ll be great,” Jason said. “Nothing to a song like this.”

  “I’m in the middle of something.”

  “Vulture-face can sing too.” Kage waved an airy hand. “Real quiet, you know.” He started going through the words again.

  Which was how Jed and I, and even Gabriel, ended up singing a round with the others. With six voices and Jed more or less crooning in the background, sitting at my side, it was very difficult to remember which number you were on at any given time. Like having to sing “The Twelve Days of Christmas” with six other people on other parts at once.

  I still don’t sing. Yet it was good anyway. Good to be with them and breathe and stand close, for all of us with the silly song and Kage telling Jed to join in and Andrew prompting Isaac about the lyrics and everything feeling clear and right in that moment.

  Here we were, seven, trying our best to do this together. The only trouble was, we were supposed to be eight.

  Ch
apter 16

  “Princess? Hey, Cassia…?”

  “Not in public…”

  “Need to tell you something.”

  Despite being newly awoken, in the dark, and just discovering how uncomfortable I was—being unable even to turn over—I could just about hear Kage rolling his eyes.

  “I’m asleep,” I mumbled, trying to extend my bent legs. “And hot. Somebody move.”

  “Never mind that. This is important. Listen, princess—”

  “Moon—” Crash.

  I jumped. So did Kage. Even in sudden panic I understood what had happened. Jason was trying to obey my request. The small movement away from me had resulted in him falling from bed.

  He bashed into the bench and floor while the two furred wolves rocketed up from their nest. I didn’t hear any yelps, but a quick snarl.

  Jason swore under his breath.

  I sat up. “Jay?” It didn’t do much good. The trailer was nearly pitch black inside, nowhere near morning.

  “Fine—sorry.” He scrambled onto the edge of the platform.

  “Have to tell you—”

  “Just a second, Kage.” At least it had woken me up. And I could stretch. “Everything’s fine, Isaac.”

  “Mind if I take this?” Jason was tugging at our top blanket. I was burning up and wanted to ditch the thing anyway, but not like this.

  “You can stay up here—”

  “Floor’s fine. Or maybe I’ll change—”

  “It’s okay, really. I just needed to stretch. Lay back down. There’s room.”

  “It’s not a big—”

  “Listen. I’ll forget this if I don’t tell you,” Kage plowed over him. “Jay, get back in bed. It worked, Cassia. The dreaming.”

  “It did?” I’d once more led us in a meditation before sleep, yet the news startled me.

  “I knew. I could control what I was doing.”

  “Make sure Andrew is still covered up.” I wriggled around to my right side so I faced Kage. “Okay. What happened?”

  Jason gave the unseen red wolf the extra blanket and eased back into bed with us after another reprimand from Kage to do so.

  “It was the forest at first. Like a Rocky Mountain or Yellowstone forest,” Kage hurried to tell in a hushed voice. “Same as how it was on the journey I ran with those cheeky coyote blokes. Then I remembered I didn’t have to be running along on a whim. I was dreaming. All at once I knew, just like you said.”